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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27978297">time traveler</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/allmywill/pseuds/allmywill'>allmywill</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Arcadia (UK Band), Duran Duran</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Doomed Relationship, Gender Identity, Heartbreak, Implied Sexual Content, Love, M/M, POV First Person, Prose Poem, Time Travel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 16:35:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,130</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27978297</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/allmywill/pseuds/allmywill</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nicholas Bates falls in love with a time traveler.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Simon Le Bon/Nick Rhodes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>time traveler</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>an old prose piece of mine turned into NiSi fic. enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Nightfall is upon me again, and yet, I still have so much to say; so many questions that my calendar will not answer. Why have you gone, where have you gone away to? My hands are missing the shape of you, my lips missing the taste of you, Simon.</p><p>An echo in my dreams says you took a trip to the moon, but I don't know what that means. I wish I did, wish I could conjure up some nonsensical words that would explain this phenomenon. How could one ever go to the moon? How can you stand upon something that is only a mere projection? I must be mistaken.</p><p>You wore such a silly outfit on the night we met; I thought you insane! You looked my way and I saw light flashing in your eyes, like a shooting star in the sky at the darkest hour. (But you'd call that a <em>satellite</em>.) Your peculiar self drew me right in, swept me off my feet, and in love with you I fell.</p><p>We spent many nights clinging to each other 'neath the indigo blanket above us, as if we halted the rest of the world for a little while. I recall the soothing sound of the apricot tree in my garden, swaying with the midnight breeze. It accompanied soft touches of your hand, tracing lines along my supple skin. I listened to you speak of wild things: home entertainment systems, seeing yourself singing on music television, and the current advances in space travel.</p><p>There was so much of you I failed to understand, my dear Simon; we were not of the same world. Mine has existed far longer than yours, for you were my twentieth century lover, and I your nineteenth century baby doll. You grew up watching something on a television screen and lazing around a beautiful home, writing the finest poetry in your bedroom next to something you call a turntable. I grew up on dusty storybooks full of magic and royalty, often fanning my tired mother in the parlor during the humid months.</p><p>You complimented my suits, running your large hands along the lapels with admiration in your stare. I expressed my longing to wear a gown, like the all the beautiful women I've seen in town. I expected you to recoil, to dash out my door right then and never return. But you took my face in your hands and said something I'll never forget, even on my deathbed. "In my world, you can do that. You can be anyone you want to be. You can be the person you feel you are within, Nicholas."</p><p>So I went out the next day and purchased a gorgeous gown of my own. I lied, I told the seamstress it was for my darling wife. (You've taught me to like lying, and I've gotten quite good at it. Perhaps it is an art.) When you saw me after I dressed myself in the brand new ensemble, you couldn't resist—a kiss I received on my lips. I smiled into it, holding you close to me, afraid you'd somehow disappear if I didn't. My hands had never held someone so precious before you, Simon.</p><p>The fabric flowed away from my body, black and pleasant to the touch. Your hands touched me everyplace hands can touch. I recall you lacing your fingers through my hair and tugging at it, as my lips caressed your craned neck. Your breathless words will be kept in my memory forever. The way your hands slipped underneath my gown had my head spinning; I wanted you and only you. Only you, Simon.</p><p>I have never felt as loved as I did that very night. It was as if the sky opened up and all the lost love of the world became mine to have, dumped into my arms for me to enjoy. To cherish as my own. Oh, you were all for me. You sang me songs that have yet to be written, because their composers haven't been born here. You sang me your own songs, too. Your voice sounded so sweet when it was muffled by my dampened skin, so beautifully charming and all for me.</p><p>I learned the meaning the love—the dreadful yet desirable sting, the bittersweet complexity of it. You showed me, Simon.</p><p>But the next morning, you said your world needed you. "Something very bad is going to happen, I have to go," you said, holding my shoulders. I think you were aware of the fact that you were breaking my newly mended heart. Through all your apologies, all your declarations of love, and everything in between, I couldn't help but believe it was my own doing. I pushed you, I urged you to make such a decision to part.</p><p>"Oh, darling, I'm so very sorry," I wept, for I always have apologies of my own. I always have something to be sorry for, it seems.</p><p>Our hands touched one last time, you pulled me in for one last kiss; I felt my world ending. I felt my heart crumbling. Then you disappeared, just as I worried you someday would. It hurt, darling, it hurt me so very deeply. I may never recover if you fail to return to me, I'm afraid. I want to know more about you, I want to spend a million more hours in your presence, and I want to see your world too. I wished to grow old with you, anytime, anyplace. Only you—you were all I wanted once I found you.</p><p>But you are gone: from my grasp, from my home, from my world. Nightfall is not the same without you, for I cannot sleep now that you're not here. And darling, what hurts the most is that I know we will never meet again. You finding your way back to me is as likely as me living until the cheerful day you are born. I will never see you again, Simon, and I ache for you.</p><p>Why have you gone home? I will die without ever knowing, perishing here without your love—I will never know one as strong as yours. No love I receive from another will ever come close to the love you gave to me in the short period of time you were here.</p><p>You're gone, back in the twentieth century. Oh, my darling time traveler, please remember me in the future days. Let me know you're there, somehow, so I can have some peace of mind here in the nineteenth century.</p><p>I turn my calendar pages with haste, as if you will appear there, but there are too many years separating us. I begin to weep once more. You and I were set apart when this world began.</p>
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